


Gently Into That Good Night

by Meatball42



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Bad Ending, Dark, Future Fic, Gen, Hope, Horror, Peace, Post-Canon, Ridiculous Disambiguation, Trapped, Trick or Treat: Trick, Warring Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-15 02:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21246005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: Over time, Jack had left so many pieces of his soul behind that the concept of his humanity was laughable.





	Gently Into That Good Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The Wavesinger (The_Wavesinger)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).

> Fair warning that although the ending to this story is optimistic in context, as far as the reader is concerned it's very depressing.

In 97-Strawberry-04, the planet Jack had lived on for eight thousand years was destroyed when a space freighter crashed into the system’s small sun. Most of the inhabitants were evacuated, but for the few million or so who remained, death was a slow affair, with the radiation sickness dragging out long enough to let starvation take hold. Jack died with his people, several times, and then left the galaxy.

It wasn’t the first destruction of the sort Jack had weathered. Over time, he had left so many pieces of his soul behind that the concept of his humanity was laughable. Every ten thousand years or so, he stumbled across a being of such unique and beautiful nature, such innate inner light, that the black curtains of his existence were lifted for bare seconds. But these encounters were mere blips in the useless eternal trek of his life; and so, he tucked himself up into his own mind, apart from the universe, for longer and longer in between each of these moments of weakness.

A hundred years later, Jack was making a living as a personal teleport repairman when he heard the news. Scientists in a nearby galaxy had identified a star near the outermost reaches of life-supporting space that was beginning its slow collapse into a neutron star. The star was not huge, comparatively, but its composition made it dense.

Pulsar stars like that one were not unusual, and Jack would have ignored the trivia if he hadn’t also overheard the designation of the newly-found star. Its name, in the language of that particular arm of the galaxy, referred to a medicine prized for its properties in restoring blood flow. When Jack traveled to the New New New New New New Library, his research proved that his hunch had been correct: the word for the star’s name had been derived from the Old^14 English word for ‘rose.’

After living for a few million years and exhausting all options toward his own destruction, Jack had given up hope for true death. He’d spent a few hundred thousand of those years in various self-induced comas, cryogenic freezers, stuck in trances, or pulled apart to base molecules in quantum electric fields, and upon awakening from most of them he had felt moderately well-rested. Eight regenerations of the Doctor and asking for advice on Gallifrey (turned out Retcon, once adapted, could work on Time Lords) had come to nothing. But the star, combined with the word ‘rose,’ gave him hope again for the first time in uncounted millennia.

The discovery returned vitality to Jack’s existence. He spent the next two thousand years truly living again. He jumped back into culture and politics, fought in a few wars, saved a few solar systems. He kept himself from falling in love for as long as he possibly could, but then he caught a young yellow lady in the act of stealing the minutes of a top-secret intergalactic conference, and he didn’t have a chance. When their last great-grandchild died Jack decided it was time.

He sold off the remainder off his assets on that planet and bought a large ship, one that was strong enough to take him where he wanted to go. He stocked it up with food and water and holos and hbooks and flew towards the edge of the universe.

It was a long journey, but Jack had had a long time to develop patience, and he knew something good was waiting for him. For that, he had all the time in the universe.

It took a few years of faster-than-light travel to reach the collapsed star. From the outside, it looked like nothing much. Jack had seen the most beautiful sights in the universe a dozen times each. Nothing much astounded him anymore. It was incredible, but he was tired. He set the ship’s autopilot to aim for the center of the star, overrode the safety mechanisms, and settled down with a good hbook.

A few months later, his ship started to age faster. The star was getting close. Jack finished off the rations of food and entertainment he’d been saving.

The ships began to break down. Jack sectioned off a safe area, which held for another few weeks. An escape pod with the right trajectory lasted another week, by which point the sights outside the window were enough to amaze even Jack. Even he’d never seen a pulsar up close, and it was indescribable.

The metal the pod was made of rusted and broke apart in the vacuum of space, and Jack died.

And woke up, and died.

And woke up, and died.

And woke up, and died.

His momentum continued. He got closer and closer to the dense star body.

He woke up, and died. Again and again.

Time went so fast that he couldn’t even tell the difference anymore, between being dead or alive. He died quickly, died again. Did he breathe in between? Or try to, at least? It was impossible to tell.

Jack stopped noticing whether he was alive, and that was when he finally found his peace.


End file.
